Post-Cold War arms competition is buildup versus hold-down, which the West cannot win

Evidence

During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a classic arms race, developing more and more technologically sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for them. It was a case of buildup versus buildup. In the post-Cold War world the central arms competition is of a different sort. The West’s antagonists are attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the West is attempting to prevent them from doing so. It is not a case of buildup versus buildup but rather of buildup versus hold-down. … The outcome of a race between buildup and hold-down is more predictable. The hold-down efforts of the West may slow the weapons buildup of other societies, but they will not stop it. The economic and social development of non-Western societies, the commercial incentives for all societies Western and non-Western to make money through the sale of weapons, technology, and expertise, and the political motives of core states and regional powers to protect their local hegemonies, all work to subvert Western hold-down efforts. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 507

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the arms-race logic literature and to contemporary nonproliferation debates; a good structural counterpoint to the classic Richardson arms-race models discussed in security studies.
• SEED: Article angle: why nonproliferation regimes structurally lose — the commercial and developmental incentives arrayed against hold-down dwarf any single state’s commitment, suggesting the regime is destined to slow but never stop proliferation.